Explore the tradegies embedded in "As you like it"?

Question

In Shakespeare's play "As you like it" clarify the pain, misery, and sinister activities lurking behind the festive surface.

Answer 1

Two of Shakespeare's most moving tragedies, Hamlet and King Lear, have the wit and incongruity of comedy embedded within them. Likewise, two of his most significant comedies, Merchant of Venice and As You Like It, are built upon the elements of tragedy.

There are three implicit tragedies in As You Like It. None of them is resolved realistically. The happy endings for these potentially tragic characters in their impossible situations are based upon thoroughly unbelievable conversions of the perpetrators of villainy.

(1) The usurpation of his dukedom and the banishment of Duke Senior by his younger brother, Duke Frederick.

(2) The deadly conflict between two sons of Sir Rowland de Boys, the mistreatment and disinheritance of the younger, Orlando, by the older, Oliver

(3) The alienation of Celia from her unjust father, Duke Frederick, and the flight of the two young girls from the court into the wilds.

Underlying each of these stories are themes of social injustice and political absolutism: an illegitimate and tyrannous government, sibling rivalry and the unfairness of primogeniture, and the oppression of women.

But in the very second scene of this comedy, the stage is set for a play in which the weak win out (quite unrealistically) over the strong. Orlando accepts the challenge to engage in a match with the court wrestler, Charles, and as young and inexperienced as he is (he is usually played, in fact, by a rather delicate young man) and as tough and unbeatable as Charles is, Orlando wins.

Realism, hence, is not to be the medium of this play. The innocent ideals of the Forest of Arden will have their hour upon the stage. For these two hours or so, we will have our "druthers." The banished duke and his courtiers will find simplicity, peace, kindness, festivity, and music in the Forest. The neglected younger brother will win the love of the beautiful woman and the respect of the court. And Rosalind, in the person of Ganymede, will demonstrate the superiority of a woman's wit and wisdom and the powerlessness of paternalistic domination.

The power of the play is NOT in its plot, certainly not in its realism, but rather in the character of its heroine Rosalind, in the celebration of love (among four diverse couples representing all social levels), in the pleasures of wit and music, and in the language in which ideas and moods are expressed.

But realism, with its pathos and ordinariness has its say on the edges of this romantic idealism: in the ageing of the servant Adam, in the cynical philosophizing of Jacques, in the quarrelsome peasant couples, William and Audrey for one and Silvius and Phebe for another, and of course in the clowning of Touchstone.

And while the courtiers and the peasants are enjoying the simple life of Arden, the real play--tragedy, comedy, melodrama, farce--is taking place in the lives of all those who experience the play, its audience, its actors, eventually even its characters themselves (after the curtain falls).

Duke Senior recognizes this, and Jacques speaks of it in Shakespeare's memorable words:

DUKE SENIOR
Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy:
This wide and universal theatre
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play in.

JAQUES
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

In the real world ("This wide and universal theatre"), infants puke and mewl, schoolboys whine, lovers sigh, soldiers fight, justices of the peace act their part (talk, talk, talk), the elderly shrink, and at last, past second childhood (with its own mewling and puking) all is forgotten. The end is oblivion--sans everything.

So every comedy ends, if not in tragedy, at least in pathos ("more woeful pageants"), and all of us play our parts on this stage of life--where the audience are really the actors. Most of us are closer to Silvius and Phebe, or poor William and Audrey, but that doesn't mean we can't aspire--can't imagine ourselves--to be Rosalind and Orlando.

Arden may be the paradise we lost, but that doesn't mean we can't rebuild it in our minds, in our experience, in love for one another. Finally, maybe the most admirable character in As You Like It is old Adam. He "rebuilds paradise" by his courage, his patience, and his self-sacrifice. His name may be well chosen. For he, after all, is Everyman--or could be.